


You put your arms around me and I'm home

by akosmia



Series: little talks [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 22:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13645746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akosmia/pseuds/akosmia
Summary: Their sides almost touch and the feeling is intoxicating - light and darkness mixing in the gray space that divides them, blending until they can't understand what is what. It's all so much easier like this, when they're soft and calm, Ben and Rey, and nothing more, and there's no galaxy to save or burn.He wishes all his life was like these nights, easy and spontaneous and frightening, yes, but so, so beautiful.





	You put your arms around me and I'm home

**Author's Note:**

> somehow this turned into a series?  
> there's no plot - i don't do plot, apparently. it's just the two of them talking at night, so, yeah, that's it. i just want to see them happy and soft that's all i want :(

The night is quiet, as usual - stars stare down on him from the window of his chamber, leaving a trail of light in the darkness that surrounds his mattress. The noises of the ship are the only thing he can hear, and they are almost a lullaby that should put him to sleep, reassuring him he's safe, but instead they just keep him awake, making him uneasy and jittery.

He's waiting - waiting for the moment all sounds disappear, enveloping him in a silence full of promises, making his heart thump furiously in his chest, a frightened little thing learning to beat without breaking.

He's lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling and chasing down a calm that seems to slip away from his hands, when he feels it - a tug at his heart, something that binds him and pulls him into an abyss of blinding light he is unable to get away from.

And he doesn't want to, truth be told. He wears the darkness like an armor, tying it to his heart in a lonely silence, but he aches for that spark - for the pure, shining light he feels flickering in his soul when she holds his hand and pulls him into her. She drags him into the abyss with her, and he'd gladly dive in it, breathing in the light and letting it change his soul. 

It's a nice image, and he smiles - a gesture that verges on painful, but a good sort of pain he could get used to - as he senses her presence right next to him. She appears as sudden as ever, lying on his bed like she belongs there and she's something wonderful - a marvel of limbs and bones, standing so close to him, her soft breaths the only sound he can hear right now, mixed with the furious noises his heart makes in his ribcage.

"You are not sleeping." she observes, turning her head into his direction. She's lying on her back and there's an ease in her body - she's not protecting herself or turning away from him; instead, she's open and soft, her arms under her head, her hair loose around her face, and her gentle gaze on him.

He's still not used to the way she looks at him - her eyes speak of understanding and devotion, something he never experienced in his life, and she leaves him breathless as she gives him a small smile, barely lifting the corner of her lips. She's a whole universe full of wonders, and he aches to lose himself in her and never come back.

"Neither are you." he replies, and she laughs, softly - a sound he treasures every time, a sound that leaves him astonished. He didn't remember such a thing could even exist, before she came into his life, aiming her blaster at him and shooting down all his defenses. Years and years of darkness, loneliness, rage have shaped him, carving him out of fear and pain, a brutal work of something that isn't quite art, but a vicious virtuosity, burning down all his memories, all the life and love he had known before, but now she laughs - gently, as sweet as she always is at night, a hesitant sunset ray that warms up his skin - and those memories, those feelings he thought dead resurface to his mind, leaving him scared, but also grateful.

She smiles at him, and she kills him with her kindness, but she brings him back too.

"Well, I was going to sleep, but then this happened." she says, raising a hand to gesture at the small space between them. Their sides almost touch and the feeling is intoxicating - light and darkness mixing in the gray space that divides them, blending until they can't understand what is what. It's all so much easier like this, when they're soft and calm, Ben and Rey, and nothing more, and there's no galaxy to save or burn. He wishes all his life was like these nights, easy and spontaneous and frightening, yes, but so, so beautiful. "I don't mind it, though." she adds, catching his gaze again and giving him a proper smile, her eyes shining in the shadows of his room like stars against the darkest of night.

"I don't mind it either." he says, stretching out his hand. He's never been brave - reckless and impulsive, sure, driving into danger and pain without thinking, letting his anguished, scarred heart rule his head, but _brave_ is something that doesn't belong to him at all. And still, he dares to reach out for her, stretching out his hand and looking into her eyes. She makes him brave, somehow, and he's not fear or rage or pain anymore, not only. There's something new in him that awakens under her gaze, and he's always surprised to realize how she can change him - or how he can change himself, when she looks at him.

He knows these are fleeting moments - he can't change, not really, not forever. There will always be the voice in the back of his mind, whispering him awful thoughts and twisting him even after Snoke's death, and he will always be a ruin, a poor excuse of a man, a failed experiment neither light nor darkness will claim.

He can't change, he can't be the person she deserves - but that's the most incredible part, that's what leaves him out of breath and shakes him, keeping him awake waiting for her. 

She knows. 

She knows and she doesn't care, not at night. She looks at him, and she wants him, by her side - him, not some kind of idealized version of Ben Solo she has in her mind, but him, flesh and bones under her gaze. A boy with no names that fit him, and a broken soul, and a frightened heart. 

At night, he bends toward the light, diving deep into the abyss she opens at his feet, but she bends too - toward the darkness, toward him - and they somehow meet halfway, in the twilight.

She smiles, again - dimples marking her face, making her something wonderful and precious - and takes his hand, intertwining their fingers, stroking his skin with her thumb with ease. He doesn't see the future anymore - he only sees her, and the way she holds his gaze, gentleness and resignation mixed on her face, a longing on her features that mirrors the one he feels in his heart. That's all he cares about, really. He doesn't want the future anymore, when she's right there, in the present, holding his hand.

His heart is a fluttering little creature in his ribcage - so young and inexperienced, the heart of a boy that never was. 

She sinks into his mattress, resting her head on his pillow, and she's a beautiful sight - something he'd like to see every day of his life. There's no desperate desire behind this wish - he wants nothing more than that, than Rey, lying on his bed like she's used to it, hair splattered on his pillow as he gently traces her freckles, worshipping her. He is surprised by the longing he feels in his soul, as he imagines it.

She yawns, her back almost arching off the mattress, and he stares at her in wonder, always surprised by the vulnerability she shows him when they're like this. She's not the brutal warrior he has met in a snow covered forest, time ago, but she's Rey, kind and warm and real.

"You can sleep, if you want." he tells her, as he gathers up the courage to stroke the back of her hand with his thumb. Her skin is not smooth and silky - she has scars, and lines from her work as a scavenger, and there are calluses on her fingertips, on her palm. It makes her real, and he can feel something flicker in him as he realizes that he treasures every single imperfection on her skin. 

She looks at him, quietly rolling over so she can properly face him, and there's the smile again - the one that hangs at the corner of her lips, the one that haunts him like a ghost and turns him soft, his insides doing funny things when he thinks about it.

"And what are you going to do? Watching me sleep?" she asks, teasingly and then she's giggling at his blushing cheeks and oh - that's really a nice sound. She doesn't do that often, war and loss wearing her thin and making her frown, but right now she giggles under his gaze, throwing her head back like a kid, and he almost cries, and aches to bury his face in her neck, where he could feel her laughing echoing from her body to his.

He tries to smile, a habit he lost a long time ago - he feels himself crack open as she looks at him, but she squeezes his hand, and somehow it's okay.

"Well, sleep doesn't usually come easy to me anyway." he confesses, and he is amazed by the way the words just tumble out of his lips when he talks to her. He tears himself apart for her, he open his broken chest right before her eyes, and he shows her the deepest, rawest part of himself, weaknesses and vulnerabilities, the points in which his soul is cracked, and she doesn't flinch, she doesn't turn away or take advantage of it. She just puts her hand on his face, her fingers gently tracing his moles as if she's counting them, and he relaxes under her touch, and for the first time he isn't afraid of showing her who he truly is.

She caresses his temple, as if she's trying to melt away all his terrible thoughts and memories with the brushing of her fingertips, and maybe she can, for a shining moment. "Nightmares?" she asks, gently. She doesn't push him to speak, she just stares at him, with her kind eyes and a touch that speaks of understanding.

He nods, briefly, his lips pressed together as he looks at her small frame, the way her shoulders rise and fall with her breath, harmonic and wonderful, something spontaneous and miraculous at the same time. "Yeah," he says, in the end, giving her a small, self-deprecating smile. "Well, I guess I deserve them anyway".

Her fingers brush against his jaw as she cups his face - and really, he wants to cry and laugh at the same time, because her hand is so small, next to his face, but it feels like she's holding his entire frame in the palm of hand, and she seems so incredibly bright and strong and radiating he feels intimidated by her.

But she's Rey, and when she looks at him, there's no brutal light burning him - there's only the gaze he has learned to understand, to remember in his sleep, to search for in a room full of people. "Don't say that".

It shouldn't be so easy, he tells himself - she should tell him it's true, that he deserves the nightmares and the pain and the horror, that he is made of darkness and for darkness, and there's nothing worth salvaging in him. She should hate him, she should scream at him, telling him he disappointed her, telling him he had his chance, and no amount of sadness and regret can change what he did. 

But she doesn't. She traces sweet patterns on his skin, her fingers trailing down his neck, following the line of the scar she has gifted him. There's sorrow and regret in the air, as she brushes against it, and it almost feels like she's repairing him, closing the wound she opened in the first place. 

He doesn't understand her, and her kindness, and he shivers.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks, and his voice falters, something in his throat making it hard for the words to come out. He's still holding her hand, and her fingers are still on his neck, but he can feel himself tremble under her gaze, and he can't understand her, and it terrifies him.

He has learned to fear what he can't decode - pain waiting for him just behind the corner, ready to take hold of him and break him down, only to build him up again, angrier and more lethal. But she traces his scar with delicate fingers - so different from the swirling that cut him open - and she reassures him, her warmth echoing in his body as she presses her hand on his chest, covered only by a tank top.

"I don't know." she replies, and there's a small smile at the corner of her lips, a smile he aches to kiss to know what it feels like against his mouth. She looks down on her hand, fingers splayed right above his heart, and he realizes she can feel him - she can feel the way the frightened creature in his chest longs to break free and thumps against its cage of bones. She smiles again, and she raises her eyes to meet his, and everything he knows is being rewritten by the gentleness of her gaze. "I can't give you an answer I don't have. But," she adds, and her fingers dig in the fabric of his top, almost as if she's stroking his heart. "It feels right".

It feels right - what an incredible, strange, miraculous thing. Nothing ever felt right in his life - not the looks his father gave him as he flew away from him again, not the gentle nudging of his mother as she shipped him to some unknown corner of the galaxy, not the gazes Skywalker reserved him during training. And certainty, not the voice in his head telling him terrible things, twisting his mind, burning his soul until he was a ruin, a broken apprentice, a failure no one took responsibility for. 

Nothing ever felt right in his life.

But the touch of her hand on his chest somehow grounds him, and reassures him, and carves a hole in the layers of sorrow and rage and regret he covers himself with, and it touches his heart, the one he never thought he could have again. Nothing ever felt right, except for her fingers, gently putting him together as he crumbles before her.

He still doesn't understand - she has torn him open, and knocked him out, a ruthless flash of light burning him, blinding his eyes, but now she reaches for him, and she's not brutal and terrible at all, but warm and loving. 

He has done terrible things, and they both know those are not forgiven - there's no absolution in her touch, no forgetting about it. But somehow, when they're like this, holding onto each other through the night, they almost belong to another life, another galaxy, another universe.

"Thank you." he says, and his lips tremble as he utters the words. Gratitude is still something new to him, but he regards it with less of a fear and more of a curiosity now. 

She is surprised, but then she smiles again, quietly - the smile that makes his heart flutter in his chest and leaves him out of breath. Her fingers slowly trail up, following his scar again, tracing it as they reach his face, and then finding their place in his braided hair, playing lazily with the black strands.

"You braided your hair on your own." she observes, as she traces patterns at the base of his neck, and he shivers at the touch, unconsciously leaning into her until he rests his forehead against hers. Her eyes are almost green, up close, and her freckles are a constellation falling into place and he's lost, utterly and completely lost in her.

"I didn't know if you would show up." he replies, and she laughs, softly - the most beautiful sound in the whole galaxy. 

It feels like a truce, like a moment of peace as they lie on his bed, vulnerable and honest and raw, looking at each other with only stars in their eyes. The rest of the galaxy is just a wisp of smoke around them.

"I'll try to let you know, next time." she jokes, and it's something so wonderful his heart stops beating for a second - Rey, lying on her side, their fingers still intertwined, her hand lost in his hair, and a warm, beautiful smile on her lips, joking and making herself real in front of him. She's not a goddess or a wondrous creature full of light and hope and righteousness - she's just a girl, she's just Rey, with her dimples and freckles and scars, something normal and plain and real and beautiful.

"Thank you," he says, and there's a hint of irony in his words, something that isn't born out of rage and bitterness, but out of pure and simple ease. "I'll be waiting for you, then".

It's a joke, but they both know it's true. They are waiting, both of them, with their hands stretched across the galaxy - waiting for each other, for the comfort of each other's presence, for the pure understanding they feel when their fingers touch. 

She smiles, again, and her hand threads through his braided hair, fingers gently brushing against his scalp, touching his thoughts. "Try to sleep," she says, gently, nuzzling his nose and laughing quietly at his surprised expression. "I'll watch over you".

He knows she can't protect him. She can't stop the nightmares, she can't save him from himself and the terrible things he has done that come back to haunt him every night. She can't erase the fact that he has to sleep facing the door, fear clouding up his mind everytime he starts drifting away - a panic so strong, so suffocating it turns him into a boy again, betrayed and rejected and terrified. 

She can't assure him the peace he is always missing, always searching for in desperate attempts.

But she's there, and her fingers stroke his temple, and it does not erase anything, but it makes everything quieter, softer, gentler. 

"Okay." that's the only thing he can say, as he looks into her eyes, and she smiles again as her hand trails down his body, fingers barely brushing his skin, making him shiver, goosebumps in the place where they almost touch. Her hand lingers on his shoulder, right where she has burned him, brutal and lethal and oh, so beautiful, and then traces the muscles of his arm as it ventures further down, until her finger find their place on the curve of his hip.

She strokes his blaster wound, above the thin fabric of his tank top, and Ben closes his eyes, shivering, crumbling, coming alive again. She kisses his cheek, and then throws her arm across his waist, pulling him into her with a delicate push, flushing their bodies together.

He doesn't resist. He buries his head in her chest, adjusting his frame so his back doesn't scream in pain, and he breathes her in, marvelling at the beautiful, rhythmic sound of her heart under his cheek, a melody hummed under her breath that reassures him and makes him feel safe. The rise and fall of her chest against his face feels like a wave, pulling him in, dragging into a vast ocean, and he lets her do it - he lets himself sink in her, lose his soul in hers.

His arm come to encircle her waist and she's so small he wraps her completely, and his hand is on the small of her back, his fingers splayed across the material of her shirt, gripping it, clinging to it, afraid of letting her go, but she just smiles and kisses his forehead, and when she closes her eyes, her lashes flutter against his skin, and it makes him cry.

"Do you want me to tell you a story?" she asks, teasing him again, and he laughs against her chest, and he can feel her shiver against him. 

"Shut up." he says, and she chuckles, quietly, the sensation echoing into him as she presses their bodies together. 

She kisses his forehead again, her warm hand resting on his back, grounding him, guiding him into her. "Sleep," she murmurs, sweetly, peppering every inch of his face she can reach with feather-like kisses, her fingers stroking his back to reassure him. "Everything is fine, you can sleep." she says, as her lips find his temple, whispering the words right against his skin. "You are safe, Ben".

He is safe, for once. It's a new sensation for him - he doesn't remember the last time he truly felt at peace, no fear choking him, twisting him, eating his mind, his heart, his soul. He doesn't even know what safe means or feels like anymore, but her arm keeps him close to her, and the sound of her heartbeat is a lullaby that reminds him of home, and love, and warmth. 

"You are safe." she repeats, her fingers digging in the material of his top to keep him even closer, carving a hole in his skin he will never be able to forget, a new, invisible scar he will treasure, and he finally lets go. 

He takes a deep breath, and he relaxes under her touch, his eyes closed, his mind focused only on the rhythmic sound of her heart right against his cheek. She breathes in, and out, and she ease his mind as he slowly drowns into her. 

He falls asleep like this, one arm swung across her waist, his head against her chest, and warm, soft lips pressed on his forehead. It's the closest thing to peace he has felt in a long time.

She holds him through the night, and she doesn't let him go, and when his mind drifts to sleep, there's no panic, no terror waiting for him. 

There's only light.


End file.
